It’s a very encouraging experience when you read some notable author who says exactly what you think or, in my case, have also taught.
I came across this quote, on Twitter, from the wonderful spiritual teacher and guide, Richard Rohr. It was originally offered by him on Twitter in January 2013:
We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.
I agree. Whole-heartedly.
It has always seems to me quite inappropriate when I hear people speak of ‘coming into the presence of God’, when they go to church, or suggesting that God or Jesus may ‘enter into our lives’, if we invite God or Jesus to do so.
My sense is, with Rohr, that do not ‘enter’ the presence of God, nor can we earn or merit such a situation. Rather, this is the given of our lives. It is the reality of all creation.
What is needed, however, is some awareness of this reality. We have to learn to see and to hear, and to receive, and to belong, and to wonder. What is missing, then, is awareness, and that requires paying attention. Sometimes that is an effort, to see beyond our self-concerns. Sometimes, it comes to us as an almost overwhelming experience, perhaps of beauty or joy. More often, it comes unexpected, almost (forgive the word here) unawares—until we realise that we are indeed in the presence of love, life, beauty, and our own life is gathered into the life of all the living. God.
I recall once hearing the great Dutch Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx assert that the scope of the ‘kingdom’ or community of God is not limited to those who identify with the church—any church, or any faith community at all. Rather, the ‘people of God’ are all people, and it is the task of those who identify as such to be with the others, go to them, and help them to know that they too are loved and belong in this one community, of all creation. So it is not that people of this conviction have something to give to others, or to impress upon. Rather it is simply an invitation to see, to sense, to come home to the reality of where we already are.